Yes, but doesn't Apple's App Store dominate in terms of the volume of purchases? I know the iPhone isn't dominating the smart phone market, but there's also the iTouch.
Supposedly, according to Apple's numbers, there were about 50 million devices, with over 2 billion app downloads. Of course you can break those numbers apart by how many were free apps, and question the accuracy of those numbers, but that's still a lot more than any other smart phone, to my knowledge.
Ah, very good point Greevar. I guess what I meant to say, and should have said, was that even though there are many mobile products, the App Store has the highest traffic as of right now, and the most opportunity for generating income for developers.
Another thing I meant about the competition is in terms of a touch screen and multi-touch screen type of OS for the mobile phone. Apple (and I assume other companies...such as the one suing Apple) seem to be trying to use patents to keep competition (such as HTC) from being able to use the touchscreen and multi-touch technology.
So you're right, there is a lot of competition in the mobile marketplace, but for developers it appears as though Apple's product offers the most promise. Hopefully other platforms will gain in popularity for apps like the iPhone/iTouch/iPad soon.
If there wasn't such a horrible problem with our patent laws in this country (the USA) there would be much more competition in the mobile marketplace, and Apple wouldn't dominate it so much, and then developers would have more of a choice of which platforms they could target.
As it stand right now, since Apple dominates the mobile app market so much, they can pretty much do what they want, it's their company, they should be allowed to pull apps for whatever reason they want. The sad thing, of course, is that Apple has all of this power because they keep competition out of the market. Look how long it took something like Android to come about, and now Apple is going to try and thwart that as well.
Developers are kind of stuck. They can be pissed off about it but they still feel like they have to develop for that platform, because of the income potential.
Get rid of patents altogether, then everyone would have a choice, and companies like Apple would be punished by consumers when/if they try to do thing like this.
This may be Apple being hypocrites a bit, but there's nothing wrong here, really. As Ima Fish stated companies are free to compete by "pressuring" if they want. They're not forcing anyone to do anything, they're simply pressuring, and they have every right to pull marketing support for anyone that they want. It's their company, they can conduct business however they feel, as long as it's not illegal.
So while this is an interesting piece of news it's actually a good example of the free market at work.
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Re: Apple dominates the market?
Supposedly, according to Apple's numbers, there were about 50 million devices, with over 2 billion app downloads. Of course you can break those numbers apart by how many were free apps, and question the accuracy of those numbers, but that's still a lot more than any other smart phone, to my knowledge.
No, you're right
Another thing I meant about the competition is in terms of a touch screen and multi-touch screen type of OS for the mobile phone. Apple (and I assume other companies...such as the one suing Apple) seem to be trying to use patents to keep competition (such as HTC) from being able to use the touchscreen and multi-touch technology.
So you're right, there is a lot of competition in the mobile marketplace, but for developers it appears as though Apple's product offers the most promise. Hopefully other platforms will gain in popularity for apps like the iPhone/iTouch/iPad soon.
Not enough competition
As it stand right now, since Apple dominates the mobile app market so much, they can pretty much do what they want, it's their company, they should be allowed to pull apps for whatever reason they want. The sad thing, of course, is that Apple has all of this power because they keep competition out of the market. Look how long it took something like Android to come about, and now Apple is going to try and thwart that as well.
Developers are kind of stuck. They can be pissed off about it but they still feel like they have to develop for that platform, because of the income potential.
Get rid of patents altogether, then everyone would have a choice, and companies like Apple would be punished by consumers when/if they try to do thing like this.
Not a problem
So while this is an interesting piece of news it's actually a good example of the free market at work.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Bazooka Balls.
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